Pastor, Open the Word

My visit was like other visits to this elderly sister.

Time seemed to drag. Conversation lacked direction. She struggled to hear and struggled to speak. When she did speak, she said the same things she’d been saying since the first time I came to visit her at the care home, a couple years before.

She talked fondly about regularly seeing her sister (her daughter, actually) and she commented once again on the colourful gardens outside her window, the pleasant summer weather, and her nicely decorated room. And as usual, she wondered just who I was: Her family doctor? No, her pastor.   

After trying to progress the conversation for about half an hour, I decided it was time to read the Scriptures with her.

And it was when the Word was opened that something remarkable happened.

I started to read Psalm 46 and a visible peace came over her. She stopped fretting with her hands. Her restless eyes now fixed on me. After the final verse, “The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress,” she held on.

To this one small truth she clung, this fragment of the whole psalm: “The LORD is with me.” She repeated it more than once. She spoke it softly to herself, and then to me, still quietly but with conviction.

Suddenly the sentences that she had struggled to string together coalesced in a beautiful confession: “The Lord is with me,” she said, “It’s so good to know that. Life would be so hard if He wasn’t with us. Yes, the Lord is with me.”

What more could a pastor want from a visit with a 94-year-old afflicted with dementia? For just a moment, she gave me a glimpse of the state of her soul, and I knew that it was well with her. She gave a testimony that any of us should want to be able to make and embrace for all our days, “The Lord is with me.” For in this truth the whole gospel consists.

On that summer day, this sister taught me an important lesson about never underestimating the power of God’s Word. The pastor’s greatest ministry tool and resource is the Holy Scriptures: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

The distinctive element of pastoral care is the privilege to speak this living and active word into the people’s lives. No matter how compassionate or intelligent a pastor may be, he cannot himself feed the sheep of Christ effectively, much less tend to their spiritual heartaches and bruises. What he needs—and what they need—is the unchanging and powerful truth of God’s Word.

When visiting, it is easy for a pastor to turn again to the well-loved words of Psalm 23, Romans 8, or Psalm 121, to rattle them off as so many times before. There are pastoral visits when these are exactly the right passages to read. But there are so many other Scriptural treasures to share with those we visit.

Proverbs 15:23 says, “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!” To speak a word “in season” requires that we think carefully about the person we are going to visit. We should reflect on their circumstances and consider what might be a needed word from God for them.

For Scripture can serve so many functions in a pastoral visit: it comforts the grieving, guides the confused, admonishes the sinful, exhorts the complacent, teaches the ignorant, reassures the doubting, inspires the discouraged, emboldens the fearful, and helps the weak.

A pastor doesn’t always know, of course, what is a suitable Scripture to read, but this is something that he can learn. Again, the wisdom of Proverbs guides us, “The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer” (15:28). It is implied here that we can train ourselves to share God’s truth with good effect. The Scriptures will give pastors useful things to say to someone regarding their anxiety, or prayer, or parenting, or sexual temptation, or long-term suffering, or the hope of everlasting life. Paul reminds Timothy that when pastors know the Word, it will be profitable to equip them for every good work (2 Tim 3:16-17).

It is also true that a pastor never really knows what a person will hear from this reading. Like the elderly sister with dementia, someone might catch just a fragment of the text, latch onto a passing phrase—perhaps even miss entirely the main point of the reading. Yet they are somehow still encouraged, or admonished, or instructed. For the Holy Spirit will always say it better than we can.

Every time that we open his Word, God can demonstrate its remarkable power.

After reading, the pastor might make a few comments of explanation or application, but he will be careful not to obscure the divine Word with his own halting comments. Coming into a visit and then leaving afterwards, a pastor can have great confidence in the power of God’s Word which never returns to him empty (Isa 55:11).

So pastor, open the Word.